How to add TV specials to series

Example: Doctor Who 2005's Christmas specials, or Robot Chicken's star wars specials.

Right now, for some reason they're not being entered into the series folders when viewing, they're being put in the movies folder under completely random names (filenames are still things like doctor_who_2005.2012_christmas_special.the_snowmen.720p_hdtv_x264-fov.mkv or robot.chicken-dc.comics.special.ii.villains.in.paradise.720p.hdtv.x264-killers.mkv) and coming up with gibberish titles or just not resolving at all.

I'd like to see the TV series specials put into the series folders, is there a way to do that short of making a "Fake" season and adding them that way?

[DenyAll]

thetvdb.com has specials listed as season zero. You need to follow that convention to enable Serviio to match the filename to the thetvdb.com record.

So to fix - check thetvdb.com, season zero to find the episode number for the special and rename your file accordingly. For example, try renaming :

• doctor_who_2005.2012_christmas_special.the_snowmen.720p_hdtv_x264-fov.mkv to doctor_who_2005 S0E66 2012_christmas_special.the_snowmen.720p_hdtv_x264-fov.mkv;
• robot.chicken-dc.comics.special.ii.villains.in.paradise.720p.hdtv.x264-killers.mkv to robot.chicken S0E14-dc.comics.special.ii.villains.in.paradise.720p.hdtv.x264-killers.mkv;

ps. Filebot is your friend (which is what I used to find the two episode numbers above). See my post at viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10626&p=70544#p70544.
pps. this is still a "fake" season - season 0 - but it is the only way I know of doing it and follows the convention used by most (all?) online databases.

[atc98092]

Example: Doctor Who 2005's Christmas specials, or Robot Chicken's star wars specials.

Right now, for some reason they're not being entered into the series folders when viewing, they're being put in the movies folder under completely random names (filenames are still things like doctor_who_2005.2012_christmas_special.the_snowmen.720p_hdtv_x264-fov.mkv or robot.chicken-dc.comics.special.ii.villains.in.paradise.720p.hdtv.x264-killers.mkv) and coming up with gibberish titles or just not resolving at all.

I'd like to see the TV series specials put into the series folders, is there a way to do that short of making a "Fake" season and adding them that way?

Go to thetvdb.com and see how they list the episodes. Specials are listed as "season 0". For example, the Doctor Who 2005 special "The Snowmen" is listed as episode 66. So if you name your file "Doctor Who 2005 S00E66 the snowmen.mkv", Serviio will get the full episode title and it will show up in your Series folder. The year may need to go at the end of the episode name and be in parentheses, but since this particular series appears to have the year in the name, maybe not. The Robot Chicken episode looks like it would be season 00, episode 14.

The easiest way to name your files is to use Filebot. All you need to name the file is a basic name with the season and episode (doctor who 2005 s0e66.mkv), and Filebot grabs everything else and formats the name accurately for Serviio. Works extremely fast and is easy to use.

thanks for the help guys, it's starting to make sense now.

Is there any way to have Serviio output to my DLNA devices "Specials" as a name in the series folder in Lieu of Season 0? Or will it always just say season 0 and I explain to users that the specials go there?

[DenyAll]

No way to do so currently that I know of. Perhaps request it as a feature, however it may get confusing (you would have to rename your file to be season zero, but it would appear under season "Specials").

yea, I think Season 00 is fine for the filenames, but naming the folder when displayed in series view as "specials" or something custom nameable would be a good idea, as season 00 can be misleading to some.

Also, some of my series after using filebot (and using it correctly) are now registering as pornographic movies. For instance, I renamed all my season 4 American dad episodes to:
American Dad! - 5x07 - Phantom of the Telethon.avi

as per the TVdb's instructions to filebot, but all those episodes are now stuck in my movies folders as the AD porno version, how do I fix this? force rescan and force metadata seems to do nothing.

[atc98092]

Sometimes I have to experiment slightly with a series name. I had trouble with Adam 12 for example, and sometimes Hawaii Five 0 came up with the wrong version. Sometimes it's the punctuation in the file name (you have the exclamation point), and sometimes I've just had to add a space to an existing space. The parsing logic sometimes gets a little screwy.

[DenyAll]

Re: American Dad - it's probably the "-" in the filename before the series number. Serviio will ignore anything after the hyphen, so in your case is not seeing the series and episode number and is therefore thinking it to be a movie. It then matches to the porn. Remove the first hyphen from the filename and you should be OK.

In Filebot you may also want to change the default template used for renaming files. On the Rename tab, right click on the Matches button and select Edit Format. Change the format to remove the initial hyphen or to whatever suits you (I use "{n} {s00e00} - {t}" as my rename template).

ok, I'll try that.

Here's another problem.

I have 3 seasons of "Once Upon A Time", SEason 1 loads into series, seasons 2 and 3 don't.

They're all sorted like this folder wise:
Once Upon a time
-> Season 1
-> Season 2
-> Season 3

filename samples:
Once.Upon.a.Time.S01E01.720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION
Once.Upon.a.Time.S02E01.720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION
Once.Upon.a.Time.S03E01.720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION

Why is it that Serviio is only season season 1 and retrieving metadata for it but wont get me a series thumbnail or the remaining seasons?

I thought it may have been an issue with ambiguity because there is a similar series out there "Once upon a time in wonderland", but I don't know for certain.

[DenyAll]

Looking in thetvdb.com, Once upon a time was originally a series produced in 1969 that only had one season. I suspect this is what you are matching (season 1 episode 1 is called "The Gingerbread Boy").

I think you are probably after the 2011 series, also called Once upon a time, which had three seasons to date (season 1 episode 1 is called "Pilot"). As explained in the wiki, where there are multiple movies/series with the same titles, you can distinguish them using the year. So in your case renaming to:

Once.Upon.a.Time.S01E01 (2011).720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION
Once.Upon.a.Time.S02E01 (2011).720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION
Once.Upon.a.Time.S03E01 (2011).720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION

will do the trick.

Matching metadata based on filename can be tricky at first, but I think Serviio does a good job of it given the number of series and movies ever produced (and all their permutations). After a while these types of issues (series year, season numbers, special characters etc) become second nature - I can't recall the last time I had a series or movie that I had trouble matching.

I renamed the main folder to Once Upon a Time (2011) and it seems to work, weird that doing that to the BSG and Doctor Who folders didn't.

The damnedst thing is, season 1 was listed with the 2011 series titles and thumbnails despite being stored as the other series you found... odd.

here's one more for the head scratching. I've got a movie that I can't seem to get recognized at all, filename is:

Evangelion.1.0.You.Are.(Not).Alone.(2007).mkv

It's two sequel movies worked fine once I dropped them into folders named with the main movie prefix (Evangelion x.0) but for some reason this one doesn't register at all. I've double and triple checked that the title is correct, filebot found and renamed it based on the movieDB, but serviio doesn't recognize it.

Nevermind, solved it. Had to take the "1.0" out of the filename and it came right up...

[atc98092]

I did have one movie (not a tv episode) that I could never get recognized correctly until I put it in a separate folder with the movie name. The Movie is Cherry 2000, and I could not get it recognized until I made a folder called Cherry 2000 and named the file Cherry (1987).mpg. That finally solved it.

Sometimes you just have to be creative. The administration web page that Plex uses for their server product allows you to attempt to search for a mis-matched file. That's one of the few things I prefer about Plex (having a library admin tool). But for streaming my videos I far prefer Serviio for performance and picture quality.